
Book..il:^^ii:! 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



SCHOOL-ROOM CLASSICS. XI 



HORACE MANN 



BY 



WILLIAM TORREY HARRIS, LLD. 

n 

COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION 




SYRACUSE, N. Y. Z' ' '^ 






C. W. BARDEEN, PUBLISHER 
1896 



Copyright, 1896, by C. W. Bardeen 



N^^ 



C. W. BARDEEN, SYRACUSE 



NOTE 



This address was delivered before the National 
Educational Association at its meeting in Buffalo, 
1896, It is printed from a copy revised for us by 
the author. 



HORACE MANN 



The educational history of our country is 

divided roughly into two epochs ^^^^^ ^^^ 

— that of rural and that of urban city educa- 
tion 

education. This is also the strug- 
gle that is going on now — to eliminate rural 
methods and supplant them by urban 
methods. For it often happens that a city 
grows in population but is slow to avail itself 
of the opportunity that a large population 
and accumulated wealth afford for superior 
methods of instruction. 

The number of cities within the United 
States containing 8,000 inhabi- increase in 
tants and upwards was in 1790 ^^*^®^ 
only 6 ; between 1800 and 1810 it increased 
to 11 ; in 1820, 13 ; in 18j0, 2(5 ; in 1840, 
44. In the fifty years between 1840 and 
1890 it increased from 44 to 443, or ten times 
the former number. The urban population 
of this country in 1790 was, according to the 
superintendent of the census, only one in 30 
of the population ; in 1840 it had increased 
(5) 



6 Horace Mann 

to one in 12 ; in 1890 to one in 3, In fact, 
if we count the towns on the railroads that 
are made urban by their close connections 
with large cities, and the suburban districts, 
it is safe to say that now one-half of the 
population is urban. 

In sparsely settled regions a district of four 
District Square miles will furnish only 

schools twenty, thirty, or forty children 

of school age ; and it follows as a matter of 
course that the schools were small, their 
annual sessions very short, the funds to pay 
teachers scarce, the teachers themselves 
poorly educated and not professionally 
trained. For the first forty years of this 
nation such was the condition of nine-tenths 
of all the schools. By 1830 the growth of 
cities began to be felt. 

As villages grew, and after the railroad 
Graded ^^^ Connected them to the large 

schools cities, bringing them into con- 

tact with urban life, graded schools began to 
exist, and to hold an annual session of ten or 
eleven months. This required the services 
of a person whose entire vocation was teach- 
ing. One of the chief defects of the rural 
district school was to be found in the fact 



Professional Teachers 7 

that the man who taught the winter school 
took up teaching as a mere makeshift, de- 
pending on his other business or trade (sur- 
veyor or clerk or farmer, etc.) for his chief 
support. There was small chance for the 
acquirement of any knowledge of the true 
methods of teaching. Another evil more 
prominent than the former was the letting 
down of standards caused by the low qualifi- 
cations of the average committeeman. The 
town as a whole could afford a school commit- 
tee of high qualifications ; the average dis- 
trict rarely. The tov/nship system therefore 
attains a far higher standard of efficiency 
than the district system. 

When the village began to catch the urban 
spirit and establish graded schools Professional 
with a full annual session, there teachers 
came a demand for a higher order of teach- 
er, the professional teacher in short. This 
caused a comparison of ideals and the most 
enlightened in the community began an agi- 
tation of the school question, and supervis- 
ion was demanded. In Massachusetts, where 
the urban civilization had made most pro- 
gress, this agitation resulted in the forma- 
tion of a state board of education in 1837 



8 Horace Mann 

and the employment of Horace Mann as its 
secretary (June, 1837). Boston had been 
connected with Providence and Worcester 
and Lowell by railroads before 1835, and in 
1842 the first great trunk railroad had been 
completed through Springfield to Albany, 
opening to Boston a communication with the 
great West by the Erie canal and the newly 
completed railroad from Albany to Buffalo. 
This was the beginning of the great urban 
epoch m America that has gone on increas- 
ing in intensity to this day. 

Horace Mann came to the head of educa- 
tion in Massachusetts just at the 
MaS?Ieari- beginning of this epoch of rail- 
iestwork ^^^g^^g ^^^ ^^^ growth of cities. 

He attacked with unsparing severity the 

evils of the schools 
as he found them, 
these evils being 
chiefly the sur- 
vivals of the rural 
school epoch. 
The school dis- 
trict system, in- 
t reduced into 

Connecticut in 1701, into Rhode Island about 




Graded Schools 9 

1750. and into Massachusetts in 1789, was 
pronounced by Horace Mann to be the most 
disastrous feature in the whole history of 
educational legislation in Massachusetts. 
Side by side with the new impulse given to 
education in villages, no doubt the district 
system seemed very bad. Its evils were 
manifest in the opposition to central graded 
schools which were needed in the populous 
villages, but which would break up the old 
district lines. Local power is never given 
up to a central power without a struggle. 
The stubbornness of this contest on the part 
of local committeemen was continued long 
after the adoption of the township system in 
Massachusetts and elsewhere. The district 
fought for its ^^ rights" through its repre- 
sentatives on the town board, thereby post- 
poning the feasible consolidation of districts 
and the formation of properly classfied 
schools. 

Let us dwell a moment on this advantage 
of consolidated or '^union" Graded 

schools as called in New York schools 

State and the West. In the rural school, 
isolated as it was, all grades of pupils from 



10 . Horace Mann 

the lowest primary up to the secondary came 
together under one master, who had to give 
indlTidual instruction to each, finding only 
five minutes or a little more for such lesson. 
Under such circumstances he could not well 
manage over twenty or thirty pupils. 

In his classes, each formed of one pupil 
Larger ^^ those branches other than read- 

classes jjjg ^-^^ spelling, he might have 

done better teaching had he had two pupils 
instead of one. For the child learns almost 
as much from paying attention to the efforts 
of his classmate to recite as from his own. 
A skilful teacher can make recitation by an 
entire class of twenty or thirty pupils of 
even grade of advancement far more instruc- 
tive to each pupil than a private tutor can 
make the same lesson to his one pupil. The 
other pupils of the class furnish a sort of 
bridge between the teacher's mind that sees 
(or should see) the topic under discussion in 
its relations to all human learning, and the 
individual pupiPs mind that sees the topic 
in its barest outlines and has scarcely learned 
ts relations to other topics. For each pupil 
gets some one-sided view of it for him- 



Economy of Effort 11 

self in preparing his lesson, and sees in the 
class exercise (which we call '^ recitation*' 
in our American school-technique) many 
other one-sided views presented by his fel- 
low pupils, who are not likely to repeat his 
one-sided view, but to have others equally 
distorted of their own. 

Suppose two ungraded schools to be united 
in one and divided again accord- Longer 
ing to grade ; the thirty pupils recitations 
youngest, and in lowest elementary studies, 
taken by one teacher and the other thirty 
pupils taken by the other teacher. One half 
of the number of classes is saved by consoli- 
dation and each teacher has twice as much 
time for each class exercise or recitation. 
He can find more time to go into the merits 
of the subject when he has ten minutes in- 
stead of five minutes. 

In a populous village, a school of five hun- 
dred pupils is collected. There Economy of 

is a teacher for each fifty pupils, ®^°^^ 
making ten in all ; for nearly twice as many 
pupils can be taught by each teacher in a 
well-graded school as in an ungraded school. 
Each of these ten teachers divides his fifty 



12 Horace Mann 

pupils into two classes according to advance- 
ment, and classes average a half year's differ- 
ence in their intervals of progress from the 
classes above or below. He haa thirty 
minutes for each recitation. It is now pos- 
sible to promote a bright pupil, who is not 
finding enough to do in the tasks set for his 
class, to the nexc class above. For he can 
soon make up what he has omitted by the 
leap from one class to another. Bo, too, a 
pupil who is falling behind his class can take 
up his work with the next class below and 
find it better suited to his powers. 

It was an iti^is^ht into this principle that 
Martin ^^^ Martin Luther to insist on 

Luther grading the schools. The Jesuits, 

who were the first to seize 6n the chief 
weapon of the Protestants — namely educa- 
tion for the people — and turn it against them 
in the interest of the Catholic church, formed 
a school system in 1590 and also took much 
pains with grading and classification. 

Horace Mann's efforts did not at once 
coQsoiida- abolish the district system in 
dftrf^ts Massachusetts, but it prevailed 
to consolidate districts in popu- 
lous sections of the State. His school re- 



Consolidation of Districts 13 

ing of school funds by taxation ; the creat- 
ports were widely read outside of the State 
and spread the agitation of the school ques- 
tion into Rhode Island, Connecticut and New 
York and elsewhere. Connecticut succeed- 
ed in abolishing her district system in 1856, 
but Massachusetts clung to it until 1869, 
when she got rid of it. In this action she 
was followed by Maine in 1872. And this is 
what the State superintendent of Maine says 
of the evils of the district system, in an able 
summary : 

'^ First, the school moneys were inequably 
divided, some districts receiving much more 
than they could profitably expend, others 
much less than was absolutely needed ; 
second, poor schoolhouses in remote and 
sparsely settled district? ; third, short schools, 
or poor ones, if the agent attempted to 
lengthen them by hiring cheap teachers. 
Little money, poor schoolhouses, short 
schools are the necessary attendants of this 
system.'^ 

Horace Mann extended his criticisms and 
suggestions to the examination of teachers 
and their instruction in institutes ; to the 
improvement of school buildings ; the rais- 



1-^ Horace Mann 

ing of a correct public opinion on school 
questions ; the care for vicious youth in ap- 
propriate schools. He discarded the hide- 
bound text-book method of teaching and 
substitued the oral discussion of the topic in 
place of the memorizing of the words of the 
book. He encouraged school libraries and 
school apparatus. 

Horace Mann's influence aided in found- 
The first nor- ^^S ^^^ fi^st normal school in the 
xnai school ^^^^^^ g^^^^g ^^ Lexington (after- 
wards removed to Framingham), and a 
second one at Barre, both in 1839, and a 
third one at Bridgewater in the fall of the 
next year. 

Inspired by the example in Massachusetts, 

Connecticut was 

aroused by Henry 

/ m Barnard, who car- 

/ '^ j,jg^ through the 

legislature the act 
organizing a State 
board of commis- 
sioners, and became 
himself the first 
secretary of it 
(1839). In 1849 Connecticut established a 




Massachussetts in 1839 15 

normal school. In 1843 Mr. Barnard went 
to Ehode Island and assisted in drawing up 
the State school law under which he became 
the first commissioner, and labored there 
for six years. 

These were the chief fermenting influences 
in education that have worked a wide^change 
in the management of schools in the Middle 
and Western States within the past fifty years. 

Let us consider some of those points more 
in detail and get a little closer to Massachu- 
the personality of the hero whom «^"« ^^ ^^^ 
we commemorate. 

There had been in Massachusetts from 1789 
to 1839 — a period of fifty years — an appar- 
ent retrogression of education. 

This apparent retrogression — on the whole 
a healthful movement — was due to the in- 
crease of local self-government and the de- 
crease of central, especially parochial au- 
thority. It was a necessary and on the 
whole a healthful movement. The central 
power had been largely theocratic or eccle- 
siastical at the beginning. But the reaction 
against ecclesiastical control went too far in 
the direction of individualism. The farth- 



16 Horace Mann 

est s^ing of the pendulum in this direction 
was reached in 1828, when the districts ob- 
tained the exclusive control of the schools 
in all matters except in the item of examin- 
ation of teachers. The public schools dimin- 
ished in efficiency, and a two-fold opposition 
began some years before 1828, which took, 
on the one hand, the shape of an attempt to 
remedy the deficiency of public schools by 
the establishment of academies ; and, on the 
other hand, that of a vigorous attack by edu- 
cational reformers, such as Horace Mann 
and his devoted contemporary, James G-. 
Carter. The establishment of a State board 
of education, and the appointment of Horace 
Mann as its secretary, therefore mark an 
era of return from the extreme of individual- 
ism to the proper union of local and cen- 
tral authority in the management of schools. 
Horace Mann's function at this very im- 
An educa- portant epoch was that of educa- 
tional tional statesman. We must not 

fit" A lg sm 8J1 

permit our attention to be dis- 
tracted from this point if we would behold 
the greatness and beneficence of his labors. 
Pestalozzi was essentially an educational 
missionary, a teacher of pupils in the first 



An Educational Statesman 17 

grade of the elementary school. Horace 
Mann was equally an educational missionary, 
for he consecrated himself religiously to the 
task of promoting the school education of the 
people. Other people, all people, select 
vocations in which they are to work and earn 
a livelihood. But the missionary consecrates 
his whole life to a chosen work, not for what 
it will return to him in wealth or honor, but 
for the intrinsic worth of the object to be 
accomplished as a good for the human race. 

The enthusiasm of Horace Mann shone 
out of his soul in his praise of the act of the 
Massachusetts legislature establishing the 
State Board of Education in 1837 : '' This 
board I believe to be like a spring, almost 
imperceptible, flowing from the highest 
tableland, between oceans, which is destined 
to deepen and widen as it descends, diffus- 
ing fertility and beauty in its course, and 
nations shall dwell upon its banks. It is 
the first g:reat movement towards an organ- 
ized system of common education, which 
shall at once be thorough and universal/' 

It was he that was to succeed in making 
that State Board of Education the boslta of 
fertilizing spring that he de- education 



18 Horace Mann 

scribes. Ifc was a board with limited powers. 
It could not found schools, nor direct or 
manage them after they were founded. It 
should only collect information and diffuse 
it. It could persuade the people but not 
command them. In a nation founded upon 
the idea of local self-government, it was a 
very great achievement to show what can be 
accomplished by a board that cannot coerce 
but only persuade. This is the point of 
view to see Horace Mann's greatness. One 
thinks of the potency of Peter the Hermit 
preaching a crusade. It was a crusade that 
Horace Mann preached in his twelve reports 
and in his hundreds of popular addresses, 
and in his thousands of letters, written with 
his own hand. 

The 1st report of Horace Mann as secre- 
Mann'8 ^^^^ ^^^ made in 1837, and con- 

!^®ilt *ains the best statement ever made 

reports 

of the duties of school committees, 
especially in the selection of teachers. It 
sets forth the apathy of the people regarding 
the schools and regrets the employment of 
incompetent teachers. (48 pp.) 
There was a supplementary report on 



His Twelve Reports 19 

school-houses which discussed the matter of 
ventilation and warming, the proper kind of 
desks, the location of the building, the light- 
ing of the room, the play-grounds, and the 
duties of the teacher in regard to light and 
ventilation. (60 pp.) 

In the 2d report, 1838, there is much dis- 
cussion of the method of teaching reading, 
whether by letters or by the word method. 
A just criticism is made upon the character 
of the school reading books. (60 pp.) 

In the 3d report, 1839, he discusses the 
responsibility of the people for the improve- 
ment in common schools, the employment 
of children in manufactories, the importance 
of libraries, and the kind of books needed, 
the effect of reading on the formation of 
character ; and recommends strongly the 
establishment of school-district libraries. 
(52 pp.) 

The 4th report, 1840, points out the de- 
sirability of union schools for the sake of 
grading and classifying the pupils, and 
cheapening the cost of instruction. It shows 
the value of regularity and punctuality in 
attendance. (40 pp.) 



20 Horace Mann 

The 5th report, 1841, has a world-wide 
fame for its presentation of the advantages 
of education, the effect of it upon the for- 
tunes of men, the production of property, 
the multiplication of human comforts and 
all the elements of material well being. He 
showed how education awakened thought, 
increased the resources of the individual, 
opened his eyes to the possibility of combi- 
nations not seen by the uneducated. The 
circular letter which he prepared making 
enquiries of manufacturers and men of busi- 
ness, is the most suggestive letter of its 
kind. This report deserves to be published 
in a pamphlet and placed in the hands of 
the people of every generation. (37 pp.) 

In his 6th report, 1842, he presents the 
subject of physiology and its importance as 
a branch to be taught in the schools. (100 

PP-) 

The 7th report, 1843, records his observa- 
tions in European schools, and starts endless 
questions regarding the methods of organi- 
zation and instruction, bringing into light 
the questions of corporal punishment and 
the overcultivation of the memory of words. 



His Ttvelve Reports 21 

He describes in an eloquent manner the 
evils of a partial system of education, and 
treats in a judicial manner the advantages 
and disadvantages of the schools that he 
found in Scotland, Prussia, and Saxony. 
(190 pp.) 

In the 8th report, 1844, he treats of the 
employment of female teachers and of the 
method of conducting teachers' institutes, 
teachers' associations, and the study of vocal 
music. (30 pp.) 

In his 9th report, 1845, he discusses the 
motives to which the teacher should appeal ; 
describes the school vices to be avoided ; 
points out the transcendent importance of 
moral instruction ; and shows how obedience 
should be secured by affection and respect, 
and not by fear. He treats of the dangers 
of truancy and the prevention of whisper- 
ing, and a variety of practical difficulties 
that meet the teacher in the school-room. 
He shows how to avoid the evils of emula- 
tion, and commends the system of instruc- 
tion by induction instead of deduction, and 
the importance of substituting investigation 
for memorizing. (104 pp.) 



22 Horace Mann 

The 10th report, 1846, gives the history 
of the common-school system in Massachu- 
setts, and shows the relation which educa- 
tion holds to the future generations of the 
commonwealth. (35 pp.) 

The 11th report, 1847, makes a strong 
presentation of the power of the common 
schools to redeem the State from social evils 
and crimes. There is a circular letter of in- 
quiry with regard to the effect of education 
in the prevention of vice and crime. The 
letter of 1841 had inquired regarding the 
effect of education upon thrift and industry ; 
replies obtained to the letter of 1847 gave 
encouraging facts and opinions in regard to 
the moral effect of school education. The 
report continues to discuss the qualifications 
of teachers and the methods of securing 
regular attendance of children, and paints a 
picture of the effect of universal education : 

''Every follower of God and friend of 
human-kind will find the only sure means of 
carrying forward the particular reform to 
which he is devoted in universal education. 
In whatever department of philanthropy he 
may be engaged he will find that depart- 



Controversy with the 31 Schoolmasters 23 

ment to be only a segment of the great circle 
of beneficence of which universal education 
is the centre and circumference/' (80 pp.) 

The 12th and last report of Horace Mann 
presents anew the capacity of the common 
school system to improve the pecuniary con- 
dition and elevate the intellectual, moral, 
and religious character of the common- 
wealth, repeating with new force the argu- 
ments brought forward in previous reports. 
He shows the importance of religion and the 
reading of the Bible in the common school ; 
shows the importance of health and the ne- 
cessity of providing for physical training in 
the school-room ; sets forth the necessity of 
the schools for the political education of tho 
citizens. His devices to show the use of in- 
telligence gained in the schools to the me- 
chanic, the merchant, and the farmer, seem 
inexhaustible. (120 pp.) 

As a consequence of the seventh report, 
which sets forth the advantages controversy 
of the schools of Germany, there ^^00?^ ^^ 
arose the famous controversy with masters 
the thirty-one Boston schoolmasters. 

In studying the records of Massachusetts 



24 Horace Mann 

one is impressed by the fact that every new 
movement in education has run the gauntlet 
of fierce and bitter opposition before adop- 
tion. The ability of the conservative party 
has always been conspicuous, and the friends 
of the new measure have been forced to ex- 
ert all their strength and to eliminate one 
after another the objectionable features dis- 
covered in advance by their enemies. To 
this fact is due the success of so many of the 
reforms and improvements that have pro- 
ceeded from this State. The fire of criti- 
cism has purified the gold from the dross in 
a large measure already before the stage of 
practical experiment has begun. In review- 
ing this long record of bitter quarrels over 
new measures that have now become old and 
venerable because of their good results in all 
parts of the nation, we are apt to become 
impatient and blame too severely the con- 
servative party in Massachusetts. 

We forget that the opposition helped to 
Tried as perfect the theory of the reform, 
by fire ^mj ^{^ much to make it a real 

advance instead of a mere change from one 
imperfect method to another. Even at best 



Use of Text-Books 25 

educational changes are often only changes 
of fashion, the swing of the pendulum from 
one extreme to another, and sure to need 
correction by a fresh reaction. Again, it is 
patent in Massachusetts' history that the de- 
fects of old methods were in great part 
remedied by the good sense and skill of many 
highly cultured teachers who still practised 
them, and henee the wholesale denunciation 
of the old methods was felt to be unjust. 
The best teachers resented the attack on their 
methods. It seemed unfair, because it 
charged against the method all the mistakes 
committed by inexperience and stupidity ; 
and, because, too, it claimed more for the 
new device than could be realized. The old 
was condemned for its poor results in the 
hands of the most incompetent; while the 
new was commended as the ideal, without 
considering what it would become in the 
hands of unfaithful teachers. 

Take as an instance of this the use of 
text-books. Everyone will admit ^g^ ^^ 
that what is called the *' slavish text-books 
use'' of such means is a great evil. The 
memorizing of words and sentences without 



26 ' Horace Mann 

criticism and reflection on their meaning is 
a mechanical training of the mind and fit 
only for parrots. But, on the other hand, 
the proper use of the printed page is the 
greatest of all arts taught in the school. 
How to get out of printed words and sentences 
the original thought and observation recorded 
there — how to verify these and critically go 
over the steps of the author's mind — this is 
the method of discovery and leads to the 
only real progress. For real progress comes 
from availing oneself of the wisdom of the 
race and using it as an instrument of new 
discovery. That other method sometimes 
commended of original investigation with- 
out aid from books forgets that mankind 
have toiled for long thousands of years to 
construct a ladder of achievement, and that 
civilization is on the highest round of this 
ladder. It has invented school education in 
order that its youth may climb quickly to 
the top on the rounds which have been added 
one by one slowly in the lapse of ages. The 
youth shall profit vicariously by the thought 
and experience of those who have gone 
before. For the child of the savage tribe 
there is no such vicarious thinking and liv- 



Defects of the Oral Method 27 

ing ; he begins practically at the bottom of 
this ladder and with no rounds on which he 
may climb. 

Now there was in Massachusetts and else- 
where much excellent teaching in the acad- 
emies and common schools — teaching which 
trained the pupil to criticise and verify in- 
stead of to accept the statements of the book 
with blind credulity. The good teachers 
knew that their methods were good, and felt 
indignant to hear them caricatured and an 
inferior method recommended as a substitute. 

For the merely oral method does not pos- 
sess in it the capability of pro- Defects of the 
ducing the independent scholar, ^rai method 
who can be trained holding him responsible 
far mastering critically the printed page, and 
making alive again its thoughts and per- 
ceptions. 

It was a sense of something valuable in 
the old method that was not touched by the 
criticisms of Horace Mann, that led to the 
reply of the Boston masters. 

Here we come to the closer view of the 
character of Horace Mann. He ^ Hebrew 
was like so many of the great men prophet 
of the Puritans modelled on the type of the 



28 Horace Mann 

Hebrew prophets. The close and continu- 
ous study of the characters portrayed in the 
Old Testament, the weekly sermons, most of 
which were studies of those characters, had 
educated all Puritans to see ideals of charac- 
ter in ancient leaders who devoted them- 
selves to a cause and withstood popular 
clamor, fiercely denouncing whatever form 
of idol worship they saw among their coun- 
trymen. 

The ideal of a strong, serious-minded, 
independent manhood, unswerved by per- 
sonal interest, thoroughly patriotic, and de- 
voted to the public interest, it draws its sup- 
port from a sense of righteousness that gives it 
a backbone co-terminous with the axis on 
which the universe revolves. So long as 
this character is recognized and respected, 
and has in the main the support of the com- 
munity, small and great, it stands firm like 
an oak, and thrives on the hostility of the 
elements in the society that it opposes. 

But this species of character, modelled on 
the Hebrew prophet, it should be said, is far 
more likely to be an inward tragedy than a 
genuine historical one. The average man 



A Hebrew Prophet 29 

puts on the air of a censor of his age or his 
community, and develops an overweening 
egotism ; or he poses as an unappreciated 
genius for poetry, or philosophy, or philan- 
thropy, or statesmanship, or theology, or 
ethical purity of character. 

The pathway of history for eighteen cen- 
turies is strewn with wrecked individualities 
of men who have become fanatics or cranks 
through the demoniac possession of a single 
idea ; and the self-delusion — a suggestion of 
the evil one — that they are exceptionally 
wise and gifted above their fellow- men : that 
they, in short, are right and the world all 
wrong. 

It is saved from being a tragedy in Horace 
Mann and in other great men before and af- 
ter who have personified this Hebrew prophet 
type of reformer, by the greatness of the 
cause they have espoused and by their self- 
sacrificing devotion to it. 

The Great Teacher gave the one prescrip- 
tion to ward off the fatal disease that attacks 
this Hebrew individualism, and that pre- 
scription is humility and self-abasement. Its 
intellectual rule is the measure by service of 



30 Horace Mann 

one's fellows : Be their servant if you would 
rule over them. 

But we have from this ideal the most im- 
DeTeiopment P^rtant fruition of all human 
of iiidi- history : namely, the develop- 

ment of individualism and the 
formation of a set of institutions to nur- 
ture it. 

We have characters that are so strong that 
they can withstand any amount of opposi- 
tion from their fellow-men and still stand 
erect without fear. '' One with God is a 
majority.'' 

Thus Horace Mann was entrenched in his 
Fundamental fundamental principle, and on 
principle ^11 occasions returned to it to 
rally his strength. In his own words he de- 
scribes his conviction, and at the same time 
lays down the details of his policy and meth- 
ods of winning success : 

" The education of the whole people, in a 
republican government, can never be at- 
tained without the consent of the whole 
people. Compulsion, even if it were desir- 
able, is not an available instrument. En- 
lightenment, not coercion, is our resource. 



Fundamental Principles 31 

The nature of education must be explained. 
The whole mass of mind must be instructed 
in regard to its comprehension and endur- 
ing interests. We can not drive our people 
up a dark avenue, even though it be the 
right one ; but we must hang the starry- 
lights of knowledge about it, and show them 
not only the directness of its course to the 
goal of prosperity and honor, but the beauty 
of the way that leads to it. 

"In some districts there will be but a 
single man or woman, in some towns scarcely 
half a dozen men or women, who have 
espoused this noble enterprise. But whether 
there be half a dozen or but one, they must 
be like the little leaven which a woman took 
and hid in three measures of meal. Let the 
intelligent visit the ignorant day by day, as 
the oculist visits the blind man and detaches 
the scales from his eyes, until the living 
sense leaps in the living light. 

*' Let the zealous seek contact and com- 
munion with those who are frozen up in indif- 
ference, and thaw off the icebergs wherein they 
lie imbedded. Let the love of beautiful child- 
hood, the love of country, the dictates of 



32 Horace Mann 

reason, the admonitions of conscience, the 
sense of religious responsibility be plied, in 
mingled tenderness and earnestness, until 
the obdurate and dark mass of avarice, ignor- 
ance, and prejudice shall be dissipated by 
their blended light and heat." 

He preached the same doctrine regarding 

Education ^^® right of the state to educate 

t>y the at public expense that James G. 

Carter had preached. It is stated 

in these simple propositions : 

1. ''The successive generations of men 
taken collectively constitute a great com- 
monwealth." 

2. ''The property of the commonwealth 
is pledged for the education of all its youth 
up to such a point as will save them from 
poverty and vice and prepare them for ade- 
quate performance of their social and civil 
duties." 

3. " The successive holders of this prop- 
erty are trustees bound to the faithful exe- 
cution of this trust by the most sacred obli- 
gations ; and the embezzlement and pillage 
from children and descendants have not less 
of criminality and far more than the same 



What He Accomplished 33 

offences when perpetrated against contem- 
poraries/^ 

The net result of Mr. Mann's labors in his 
bright career as educational what he 
statesman is put tersely by Mr. •coompUihed 
Martin in these words : 

'^ In the evolution of the Massachusetts 
public schools during these twelve years of 
Mr. Mann's labors : 

'^ Statistics tell us that the appropriations 
for public schools had doubled ; that more 
than $2,000,000 had been spent in providing 
better schoolhouses ; that the wages of men 
as teachers had increased 62 per cent, of 
women 51 per cent, while the whole number 
of women employed as teachers had increased 
54 per cent ; one month had been added to 
the average length of the schools ; the ratio 
of private school expenditures to those of 
the public schools had diminished from 75 
per cent to 36 per cent ; the compensation 
of school committees had been made com- 
pulsory, and their supervision was more gen- 
eral and more constant ; three normal 
schools had been established, and had sent 
out several hundred teachers, who were mak- 



34 Horace Mann '*- 

ing themselves felt in all parts of the State,'' 
(Martin's Education in Mass., p. 174). 

In conclusion I suggest again the thought 
Missionary ^^ ^^- ^^^^ ^8 a character in- 
2**1 spired with missionary zeal to re- 

form society by means of the school system. 
It was this missionary zeal that led him to 
advocate in the Massachusetts legislature the 
first insane asylum, and secure its establish- 
ment — to favor the establishment of asyl- 
ums for deaf, dumb, and blind ; to secure 
normal schools, humane school discipline, 
methods of instruction that appeal to the 
child's interest and arouse him to self -activ- 
ity, and finally to devote the evening of his 
life to the Antioch college experiment. 

It is this missionary zeal for the school 
that works so widely and in so many follow- 
ers to-day ; what enthusiastic teacher is not 
proud to be called a disciple of Horace 
Mann ? 



